----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Coster" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 1:42 AM Subject: RE: Death of the West (L3ish)
> > Foreign born everywhere else = 13.2%, so most are from non-English >speaking areas. OK, I was getting my numbers from http://www.wa.gov.au/regional/snapshot/a3popul.html which is just Western Australia. There, most came from English speaking countries. I have another question though. You state that about 22% of the population is foreign born, but the net migration rate is only 0.27% per year. That must mean that a significant fraction of that population is temporary, since I don't think there is a large fraction of native born Australians leaving. > > Because kindergarten at 4 yo is State funded, very, very few kids would not > speak some English before getting to school at 5 or 6. I know my Hungarian > friend Zoltan's young son Mono speaks both Hungarian and English, but then > his parents speak both anyway. Another friend (Gabi, also Hungarian) and her > Hong Kong husband Chai speak only English to their daughter Kimberley (very > Hong Kong/Hungarian name that). Here it has proven somewhat more difficult, because of the large numbers. Let me give an example from Texas: The lower Rio Grande valley is primarily Hispanic: of 1.2 million people who live there, about 1.1 million are Hispanic. In such an environment, it is quite possible for people to live in the United States for years without learning English. Unfortunately, it is also possible to go through 12 years in a US school without learning much English. English as a second language classes were developed to address that. Unfortunately, they were also used as a way to segregate the schools. > People tend to move out into different areas once they've got settled into > work and the like. In our street here in Forest Hill we have a young > Greek/Italian couple next door, an Indian family over our back fence, a > lovely old Scottish woman, more Greeks across the road a bit, and so on. We have the problem of lotsa illiterate folks coming across the border. Many don't learn English in 10 or 20 years. We've had amnesties for the illegals who've been here years a couple of times. So, we do have a lot less control than an isolated nation/continent. > Dan: > > I think that there would be a great comparative patterns of immigration > > between the US and OZ dissertation for someone. Here, assimilation does > > happen, but it tends to take a generation or two. > > > > > > Assimilation was policy a while back, but for the last 20 years it has >been multiculturalism Which I think works pretty well, because people still >tend to assimilate into the culture that is changing around us. > Well, the fear here is that, for some people, multiculturalism might be taken to the point where the assimilation doesn't take place in the second generation. I think it does/will in that time. But, the possibility of frequently returning to Mexico from Texas and California has slowed the process down > I can fully understand Gautam and others who are either > migrants or locally born of migrant parents quickly becoming Americans > because the same thing happens here in Australia. That does make us a lot different from many European countries. Can you imagine one of us being considered truely French, for example? > > The important thing, though, is that few really mind if some allegiance is > still held for the homeland, so long as it doesn't go past bounds. It took us several wars to learn that. Just before my parents were born, German-Americans had to learn English a lot quicker. German measles became Victory measles, and saurkraut was Victory cabbage. (WW I) Dan M.
